Need help identifying a Sci Fi or Fantasy book my husband read as a kid
January 31, 2025 8:05 PM   Subscribe

I told him that Ask Metafilter has had a really good track record of finding books, so I grabbed as many details as he could remember! He called it a Science fantasy (?) novel about a strange new material and a boy/young man looking for its missing inventory.

The following is all his words that I had him type up for me.

This is going to be super vague, as it was a book I read as a young kid back sometime between 1988 and 1996. I don't remember the title, the author, or any character names or even solid descriptions. Here are the details I seem to recall.

• The strongest thing I remember is that a key plot point was a strange new material, I want to say grey, that was being used to build buildings and make weapons (and maybe armor?). I vividly remember the protagonists melting their way free from a jail/prison cell of the stuff. I want to say that it melted in direct light, and they used a flashlight to do it.

• I seem to remember that the main protagonist was a young man or boy and was looking for a mentor or uncle, who I believe was some sort of scientist or inventor, and was definitely at least partially responsible for the new material. I'm pretty sure the protagonist had companions, but I don't remember any specifics.

• There was a tyrant that was using the material to expand his powers.

• The main protagonist and the person he was searching for were human, but I seem to remember most if not all of the other characters were anthropomorphic animals or bugs (aphids are popping into my head, and the impression that they had something to do with the end portion of the book). I want to say that they were shrunken down, maybe by another invention of the mentor/uncle? I vividly remember having a dream about shrinking down and walking into a heat register after reading the book.


This is 30+ years ago and my memory is very fuzzy, so there is the potential I could even be conflating details of more than one book, but this has been bugging me for the last few years as my daughter gets toward an age where she's interested in that sort of thing.
posted by sharp pointy objects to Sports, Hobbies, & Recreation (2 answers total) 2 users marked this as a favorite
 
Clarification question: is this more likely a book with a target audience of kids or adults?
posted by itesser at 11:16 PM on January 31


Response by poster: Probably a YA book.
posted by sharp pointy objects at 1:12 PM on February 1


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